Elegia
by AgentKaz
Summary: Dying might be the best thing that's ever happened to 2D. It might be the worst. He hasn't decided yet. But one thing's for sure, it's never boring. A series of short short stories. M for some gory stuff.
1. Eat To The Beat

Hello friends! Man, has it been forever! Especially since my last Gorillaz story. 2008's a long long time ago. I sort of left the fandom after a while, but something dragged me back eventually and here I am. Sorry about not finishing most of the non-oneshots I've started in other fandoms since then. Don't worry about me not finishing this one, though. Every little story's a self-contained thing so it's not like you'll be worrying about what happens next.

Essentially it's a collection of little (very little) stories I've been writing for my RP blog z0mb12d3 on tumblr. That's for context and like, showing I'm not stealing anything, I'm not trying to be all advertisey here. Although if you do want to play he'll talk to anybody, including other versions of himself.

Sorry for the long note, I won't be having too many long notes. Too much longer and it'll be longer than the stories themselves! Anyway! Zombie stuff. Fun. That's what the M rating's for, it gets gruesome occasionally. It's mostly in the second person because I like Homestuck and got into it from RPing Homestuck but there'll probably eventually be first and third person stuff too. I think that's all I need to say.

* * *

You're hungry.

You walk out the door and set off in a random direction, knowing you'll find something really quickly. One of fame's many perks is that you can pick up just about anybody, anywhere, no questions asked. They might be after something different from what you're after, but it works for you. It's a little shocking how quickly you've managed to get used to this, but here you are, going out to find food almost like a regular zombie. Except regular zombies usually just bite everybody they can. You don't do that.

You don't notice the woman talking to you at first, but when you do you realize you've been standing there for a while. You sometimes have to make yourself act more human, so you're thankful for the fact that you're usually known for staring vacantly into space. You force the open-mouthed expression of hunger off your face and smile at her. "Hey," you say. Good start. She's kind of skinny, but that's good enough. You need to eat and it's best to get the first person you can. (Not person. Food. You need to stop thinking of them as people.)

You make small talk for a while, trying not to let any groans creep into your end of the conversation. You're pretty sure nothing you're saying makes any sense, but she's hanging on your every word. And then finally she says the magic words: "Let's go to your place!"

That's exactly what you needed to hear. You smile and nod. "Sure." You grab her hand and lead her back to the house as fast as you can go. (You've slowed down a bit since dying and walk with a very slight limp thanks to that leg bite, but you don't go slow enough for people to notice anything's wrong, at least not yet.) You lead the woman up the steps (you don't know her name, you don't want to know her name) and then over to your room. You open the door all gentlemanlike and follow her inside, closing the door behind you.

She takes one look around the room, wrinkles her nose, and looks back at you. "What is all this?"

There's a lot you could say about it. Sure, it's a mess, but you could just say you're not that great at cleaning your room, because you're not. But then again she's more likely talking about the blood everywhere. There's a couple of broken skulls in the corner and-hey, there's still some meat on that pile of bones on the bed. You make a mental note to take care of that later. She says something else and your attention snaps back to her. "Er, it's nothing, really," you say with a slight groan. The subtle sound of her heartbeat combined with her human scent is really getting to you, and finally your instincts decide you've waited long enough and you lunge at her.

The screams are loud and long and sort of desperate and you love them. Although you're not sure if it's you you or zombie you, or which one is actually you, or both. You've thought about that a million times and still can't figure it out. But when you're eating none of that matters. Eating is, after all, what you "live" for. Eventually the screams turn to gurgles and then stop as you rip flesh from the bones. Now that she's done screaming you can crack open the skull and get at the brain, your favorite part.

As the hunger subsides (but doesn't stop, it never stops, never), you shove the rest of the corpse into the fridge. Licking the blood off of your fingers, you stumble into the bathroom to get cleaned up.

Being a zombie is hard most of the time, but you could never say you don't like it.


	2. Memory

You get two of them today.

* * *

Sometimes you remember. Burned into your memory, the giant wall of hurt each time hungry teeth sank into your flesh, tearing, infecting. You no longer feel pain, but the memory is enough.

One, two, three, four, five bites. The first was the worst of them, a sizeable chunk of meat ripped from your right arm, the space now home to a collection of worms who refuse to leave no matter how much you clean it and somehow got in no matter how tightly you keep it covered. The second, on your shoulder, you got in your shock as you tried to process what happened. The third and fourth on the other arm, gained while fumbling for your knife, a hard task when you're bleeding so much. The fifth, on your ankle, obtained when the not-quite-redead corpse attacked from the ground, now causing you the slightest of limps.

You remember standing up, walking home, Murdoc's comment about how you looked like a zombie. You laughed then, you felt fine. Nevermind the fact that you couldn't remember what had happened when you left, you had more important things to think about. Like food.

You remember being hungry, so hungry, raiding the kitchen for a snack and ending up scarfing down every piece of meat in the house. Nothing would stop the hunger.

It was only then that you realized just how hungry you were. Standing there with a mouthful of unknown meat, with shredded clothes, covered in dry blood, you remembered.

That fucking hurt.


	3. I'm Only Human Sometimes

Okay, three, because I have them ready. I'll be less pushy with the rest of 'em.

* * *

You're not human.

It was hard to accept at first. Sure, you liked zombies, but becoming one? You ignored your instincts for as long as you could until you found out the hard way what that got you. You woke up in a pool of blood (someone else's this time) and realized you weren't going to be able to just ignore it.

It took you a while to start killing for yourself, and you needed some help getting motivated. Eventually though you embraced it, even started to enjoy it (oh do you enjoy it), but there was always that feeling in the back of your mind that what you were doing was wrong.

You ignored it, though, and tried to continue on with your daily "life."

You no longer belong with them, the people you see on the streets, but you still walk among them, dressed in the shreds of your humanity, refusing to let go. No matter how many times you kill, how much blood you spill, you refuse to give in.

Every time you push aside your instincts they push back. You're not supposed to be doing this, they say. You're meant to bite, to kill, to infect. You hate to admit it, but they've got some good points. (You tend to think of your instincts as a seperate person, more to keep yourself distant, but you know they're still you.)

But you can be stubborn sometimes, and this time you're not going to let something push you around. You've had enough of that.

You might not be human, but you're still yourself (even if it's just barely), and you intend to keep it that way.


	4. Clean, Clean

Hello! Thanks for reading everybody, I like you guys! I haven't put this one up on the blog yet, you guys get it first! Wow!

* * *

It's time you do something about your room. It's starting to look like it belongs to a particularly intense heavy metal band, and while you've tried cleaning up the blood once or twice the skulls and other bones are starting to outnumber your actual stuff. You haven't seen most of your shoes in a while and you're pretty sure you lost a cool hat under there weeks ago.

After a slow meander around the house (you meant to be quick, but that wasn't happening) you find where the trash bags are, and take a handful of them them up to your room. It takes what feels like forever to shove all the remains in there, but eventually you're done. This is going to take several trips, though.

You drag two bags down the stairs with an unsettling clunk each time you go down a step. "Shhh," you hiss to the bags, like that's going to help. You're not going to be able to do this alone. Dragging the bags to Noodle's room, you leave them on the floor, knock once, and then slowly open the door. "Hey Noodle, could you help me with something?" you ask as the door swings open, but she's nowhere to be found.

You close the door and frown, then drag the bags over to Murdoc's room. You stare at the door for a moment, close your eyes, and then knock. "Hey Muds, could you-"

"No!" snaps a voice from inside the room before you can continue your question. "All right then," you say, not wanting to inquire any further, and pull the bags away. It was worth a try.

It's dark when you leave the house, which is a good time to hide stuff, you think. Your night vision's pretty good, so while you can see everything, people probably can't see you. Probably. You take the bags over to the side of the house. "Russ?" you ask, looking up, but you're answered with a snore. No help there. With a forced sigh you drag the bags away, not exactly sure what you're planning to do with them.

Suddenly a light shines on you and a voice shouts "Freeze!" You do just that, one leg in the air, dropping the bags. You slowly turn towards the light, knowing this is it, it's over, they've caught you, and you're getting shot in the head.

"Need some help?" Instead of the police, Noodle stands there pointing a flashlight at you, a grin on her face. A smile slowly forms on your face as you hand her one of the bags. "Thanks," you say. She nods and the two of you set off to hide the evidence.


	5. (Everyday Is) Halloween

Thank you all for reading! I think I like writing short short stories. I should write more of them. This one's not on the blog yet.

* * *

You already love October.

Not just the decorations, the atmosphere, the horror films everywhere, but what it means for you as a zombie.

It makes things a hell of a lot easier.

It started out as an experiment, leaving off your bandage one day when you went out shopping, letting your worst bite show instead of hiding it. It was a hit. Everyone you ran into was sure you were just enthusiastic about the upcoming holiday. After all, why wouldn't a horror movie fan such as yourself put so much effort into their costume and wear it a lot?

Of course you would. And you do.

So now you zombie it up, dragging your foot along dramatically as you walk, holding your hands out in front of you, groaning like a traditional horror movie zombie, and you get compliments. Nobody runs. Nobody's afraid.

They say your makeup's very realistic. Of course it is. It's real. The bloodstains on your clothes, the blood smeared all over your face and hands, the blood you always get in your hair despite trying not to, the worms crawling around in your bites, it's all there. No need to clean yourself up after every meal.

You can even take your food out with you like any normal person. They assume it's a prop, a fake. You're not going to correct them. Walking around with a severed arm, with a finger dangling out of your mouth, like it's a normal thing to do? It's great.

You know you'll have to go back to hiding things next month, but for now you can take a break from pretending to be alive. Everyone thinks you're pretending to be dead. That's fine with you.

It's the easiest thing you've ever had to do.


	6. Remember I Was Vapour

Okay I'm posting two today because I feel like it. This one's not on the blog, don't know if it will be yet.

* * *

Did you know you have to breathe to talk? I didn't. Until I had to learn to breathe.

It's hard, learning to breathe. You go your whole life with that being something you do without thinking and then suddenly you've got to think to do it. Add being constantly hungry and having what sort of amounts to a guy inside your head yelling at you that you're doing stuff wrong and things can get pretty confusing.

Wait, no, things _do_ get pretty confusing.

After I died I could still talk. I was used to breathing and I guess my body never got the message that I didn't have to do that anymore. But eventually as time went on it slowed down and finally stopped breathing on its own. I never noticed it, I was always fine, but after my first kill, the one I did by accident, it finally caught up.

When I came to I couldn't talk. I could make a few groans here and there but that was it. I guess maybe you have to breathe for that too, but that was instinct running things and zombies don't usually talk much so I don't think we have instincts for that. I still knew how to talk, sort of, but whenever I tried, nothing came out.

I had to teach myself. It's not like I could tell anyone about it. I hadn't been talking to anyone since the accident anyway so it wasn't like it was new to them. They knew I felt bad about it.

I guess I could've written it down, but I never thought of that.

The first time I sucked air back into my shriveled lungs (I don't know if they're actually shriveled, but I hadn't been using them so they probably were and that sounds sort of cool doesn't it?) Murdoc had said he was leaving. Eventually I sort of figured it out and asked him when, cos all he's been doing's been yelling at me so if he left then he wouldn't be doing that anymore.

He hit me for that, guess he didn't think it was funny, but it didn't matter to me cos I couldn't feel it. I think that made him angrier, actually, but he couldn't do anything about it.

He never left, actually. He keeps saying he's going to but I don't believe him.

Right. Anyway. So after that I started talking more, but sometimes I still need to remind myself to breathe.

I guess I need something there to remind me I'm dead all the time.

Y'know, other than being hungry.

And other than never forgetting cos that's a hard thing to forget.

I don't know.


	7. What If

Hello readers and pals, nice to see you! Here's a new thingy. Hopefully this'll clear things up a bit! If it doesn't, well, my bad.

* * *

If you had one piece of advice you learned from dying to give to people, it'd be "always pay attention."

Or maybe "don't forget to wear trousers when you leave the house," but you could have learned that any time.

Or "playing with knives while you can't feel anything means if you stab yourself you're not going to notice and it's never going to heal so you're going to have big knife slices in your leg for the rest of forever, great job 2D."

Or "don't eat people when your bandmates are trying to sleep because they'll all wake up and be angry at you."

Maybe even "always go for the brain first because it's really good."

There's a lot of stuff you learned after dying.

But not paying attention was what got you into this mess in the first place and you're never getting out of it, so it's probably the most important.

If you had been paying attention, maybe you would have noticed the zombie before it managed to sink its teeth into you. Maybe even before it got close enough to do so. Maybe you would have been able to return alive and unharmed.

If you had paid attention maybe you would have never gone that way, would have taken another route, any route, back where you were going.

But you didn't pay attention, and now you're dead.

Undead. Whatever.

You're lucky you're still around, too. The only thing keeping Noodle from killing you was being able to talk, to explain yourself. You're pretty sure that if you hadn't died before you came home you'd be gone for good by now.

But if you'd been paying attention you wouldn't have had to worry about that in the first place.

You know looking back on all these what ifs isn't going to change anything, but you can't help it.

You'll definitely be paying more attention to things now, though. You have to.


	8. The Noise Inside My Head

If I keep posting these I'm going to run out before I get a chance to write more but I don't care. Here you go. A good portion of this stuff isn't on the blog yet. Maybe I should slow down. Nah.

* * *

Instincts. I hate them. I know they're part of me, they _are_ me, but they feel like something else. Like there's somebody else in my head telling me what I should be doing, what I'm doing wrong. Nagging me. The instincts want me to bite everyone. They want me to kill everyone. They want me to eat everyone.

I'd be okay with that if I wasn't not okay with that.

I want to eat everyone. I do! I know originally it was just the instincts that wanted that but I guess eventually they came over to me, or maybe it's cos they are me, the zombie part's me and the part that still thinks it's human's me and everything's me but it doesn't feel like it's all me.

Does that make sense?

I thought it would get better if I got used to it but I've been dead for half a year and nothing's changed. I'm better at controlling it but it's still there.

Yelling at me.

I'm so hungry all the time and having things in there yelling at me doesn't help me any.

It makes me hungrier. I'm sure that's the point though.

Sometimes I think the instincts are right, that I shouldn't be here pretending I'm still human, that I'm still me. I'm not. Well, I guess I'm sort of still me, but I'm a different me.

A dead me, a me that's a monster. A me that's a walking corpse. A me that likes to kill. A me that loves the taste of blood and brains and human flesh and the screams of scared people and everything that comes with being a zombie.

A me that's everything I ever wanted to watch but nothing I ever wanted to be.

Maybe I should stop pretending. Maybe I should just let go and be a regular zombie.

But I can't. I can't stop trying to stay myself.

And I shouldn't, should I? Why should I stop trying when I've come this far?

My instincts can just fuck off.


	9. Plans

Hello. This one's early on in the "plot" if you will. Thanks for reading!

* * *

The plan was foolproof. 2D didn't have to eat anyone. All he had to do was stand outside among the people and ignore his hunger and not eat anybody and he'd get so used to it he wouldn't even have to try. Although, he thought as he watched people pass by, it wouldn't be easy. Everyone looked and smelled delicious and he was having a hard time keeping his mind off of it. But that was what the plan was for, right? All he had to do was ignore them, and he'd be fine. He was sure he could do it.

Despite wanting so badly to eat everyone, it was his best plan ever, for sure. And it worked for a while, although as he got hungrier and hungrier it made things a lot harder. He imagined eating everyone he saw, how they would taste, the noises they would make when he bit down into their delicious flesh. He drooled at the thought of it. But he could do it! He could handle it. It didn't matter how hungry he was, he had The Plan.

The foolproof plan. The plan that was going to work. That plan.

But then there was that interview a few days after he died, and that plan came crashing down.

He had himself all cleaned up, freshly bandaged, his other bites barely noticible, sure that he'd be fine. He looked human enough, his plan was in full effect, and nobody was any the wiser. Well, nobody that didn't know, anyway. But as he sat on the chair with the delicious-looking man asking him questions he realized he couldn't concentrate. Had he just been asked a question? What was the interview even about? He could barely talk, and he could barely listen. Not only was the interviewer there, but so were his bandmates, and he was a freshly turned zombie who hadn't eaten anyone in days.

He sat there, growing twitchier by the minute, trying to focus only on the interviewer. His questions barely made sense, but luckily Murdoc was doing most of the talking. If he did something, which he was sure he wouldn't, it would be better to bite the interviewer instead of his bandmates, so he kept staring straight ahead, refusing to look at the others. And just like he'd feared, eventually he couldn't take it anymore and attacked the interviewer with a hungry groan.

He remembered the look of confusion turning into fear in the man's eyes as he attacked, but he didn't remember anything after that. All he knew was he loved that fear, and wanted to see it again and again.

When he came to, he looked down at the corpse in front of him in confusion. He slowly sat up and looked around at the shocked faces of his bandmates (well, mostly shocked. Murdoc didn't seem to be fazed in the least). _Shit_, he thought. He groaned again, started to stand up to go get cleaned up, and went right back to eating the body.

That was only the start of his problems.


	10. I Ran (So Far Away)

I doodled a thing because 2D was threatening to do a thing for a while and then I wrote a thing about it, that's the story about this one.

* * *

"You look great!" she says, trying to hide the fact she's giggling. She's not very good at it. I'm pretty sure anybody would be able to tell she's doing that. But I'm really observant these days when it comes to humans doing things (it's one of those things that comes with being a zombie I guess) so it's super obvious. She's cracking up, and I can tell.

It's good though, it's exactly the response I'd been looking for.

I'd been threatening to do my hair like Mike Score for a while. Before he went bald, I mean. I've only got so much hair and it's not growing back so I can't exactly shave my head, can I? I mean I can but then I'd never have hair again and I like my hair. But anyway, I'd meant it as a joke but eventually I thought it'd be funny so I did it for real.

It's real easy. You have to do your hair like Ziggy Stardust, then push on the top and leave the sides sticking up. That's how he did it, they say.

Noodle doesn't know it's a joke, though, and I think she's trying to make me feel better about my hairstyle.

So I'm standing there, a zombie with a Flock of Seagulls haircut, while my bandmate's trying as hard as she can not to laugh at me. I don't want to give up the joke and she doesn't want to make me feel bad.

I stare at her for a while, trying to avoid the urges to both laugh and bite her. It's sort of uncomfortable and awkward but I'm not budging.

Then finally I crack up. "Noodle? It's a joke."

She stares at me and then finally starts laughing too. She walks up to me, stands up on her toes, and pushes my hair down. Then she walks away.

I'm guessing it was a hit.


	11. Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)

Here's another one of those plot style ones. I dunno. Thanks for reading, everyone who's reading! Here's a complimentary hi-five.

* * *

2D had no idea why Murdoc knew people who could sell him dead bodies, but he wasn't going to question it. He knew all kinds of weird people, so people who had bodies probably fit right in. Foolproof plan number one hadn't been foolproof after all, but the second plan was going to work perfectly. Really. For real. So maybe he couldn't go without eating entirely. Okay, no big deal, learning experience. That didn't mean he had to keep killing people.

Killing that interviewer was just a fluke. He hadn't meant to do it, it had just happened, and he felt terrible about it, but he was sure he'd never do it again. He could just forget about it, pretend it never happened, go on with his "life."

So yeah, maybe the last idea hadn't been the best, but that didn't mean this idea wasn't. In fact, this plan was better than the last one. Much better. He'd get his food but he still wouldn't have to kill anyone. This one was The Plan.

And it was a good thing he had a plan. He was starving. It had been way too long since he'd eaten the interviewer and it took him forever to start talking again so he could tell everyone about his problem.

So there he was, standing at the designated spot in the middle of the night, waiting for his first shipment of food. He nervously checked over his shoulder, worried that someone might have followed him. He had to have looked ridiculously suspicious, all sneaking around outside like that. Nobody crept up on him, though. He was alone.

He stood there for what seemed like forever, waiting for a sign of anything happening. Finally a black unmarked truck came driving up and a man in dark clothes wearing sunglasses (at night? really? what was his deal?) hopped out. Another man in sunglasses waited inside.

Silently the man went around to the back of the truck and unloaded several body bags on to the ground. He looked 2D over a few times (how could he see anything? 2D could barely see and he had zombie night vision, it didn't make any sense), and then wordlessly handed him one of the bags.

"Er, thanks," 2D said with a slight smile, trying to keep from dropping the bag. He shifted the bag to one arm, pulled a wad of bills out of his pocket, and handed it to the man. The man stood there for a moment, staring at him from behind those spooky dark sunglasses, and then turned around and walked back to the truck.

Creepy.

2D stared as the truck drove away. He looked down at the body bag in his arms and the pile of body bags on the ground next to him. He should have planned ahead. How the hell was he going to get these things home?


	12. Lovesong

Really little one today, sorry. Probably won't do any tomorrow, I have school for a while and then I'm going to see My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult so I probably won't have too much time to be online. I wasn't exactly planning on doing these so fast though!

* * *

There's a lot I hate about being a zombie, but there's a lot I love, too.

I love how it tastes when I bite into human flesh, brains, hearts, when the blood comes gushing out of the wound and it tastes like it's the greatest thing I've ever tasted. It's the only thing I can taste these days and I enjoy it more than I should.

Except in zombie terms it's not more than I should, it's just how I should.

That gets a little confusing.

I love the sounds my food makes when I bite it, the screams of fear and pain.

It would have bothered me months ago, but now it's my favourite thing to hear. I want to hear everyone scream all the time, but it bothers my bandmates sometimes. I should probably soundproof my room.

I love seeing someone getting scared so quickly when I attack them.

I'm not the scariest zombie, in fact I think I might be a little embarrassing how not scary I am, but I guess everyone gets scared when they're going to die so unexpectedly.

I love the extra ripping and tearing that comes with missing my front teeth.

It's sort of a hassle but the zombie part of me, the part that's become more me each day, thinks it's great.

I love not getting headaches anymore, not being able to feel pain.

I might not be able to feel anything else, but it's a small price to pay.

I don't know who I am anymore but I think I'm okay with it.

I think that's sort of fucked up, isn't it?

But I don't really mind.


	13. Pictures of You

Hello everyone! Sorry, apparently "not doing one tomorrow" means taking a super extendo-break. I got a little busy and then kind of didn't feel like writing anything, but then there was a "do prompts with my character" thing on tumblr and I wrote some really little stories so here they are. Might do it again soon, it was fun. These are all prompted by either dualdent (another 2D) or the-japanesegorillaz (Noodle) and aren't "canon" to this particular storyline (or to each other!). That's about it. Anyway, thanks for reading and writing nice comments, I love you and here is your hi-five.

* * *

Everybody's dead or dying and even though you'd like to take credit for this one it wasn't you. No, some other zombie's been at work here. And they've been busy.

You found him while you were on a food run, trying to avoid a group of zombies. It's weird seeing another yourself in person, and even weirder trying to keep him (you?) alive when all you want to do is crack open that blue-haired head of his (yours?). But you stop yourself. He's one of the only people left alive, after all.

The world as you know it's ending and you can smell the landscape changing. Everything smells like death. Food's getting scarce and you happen to have something to eat right next to you but he's you and you're him and you're not going to eat yourself and you're not going to let anyone eat yourself.

You hand him a crushed box of cigarettes you forgot you had in your pocket. "Sorry about all this," you say, even though none of it was your fault.

No, you don't really like the apocalypse, you decide, trying as hard as you can to ignore the breathing you beside you. Not at all.

* * *

Your big major important zombie rule was always "never kill friends." And you counted every version of yourself as a friend, just for simplicity's sake.

But that rule was easy to break. After all, you did get hungry. And you were starving, and that other you was right there. So, you found yourself staring at yourself, wondering just how you might taste.

It wouldn't be bad, would it? Just a taste?

You can see him getting freaked out the more you stare at him. You know what you look like when you're freaking out and trying to hide it. You know yourself best.

You don't even realize what you're doing when you attack. You're too far gone behind your instincts, unconsciously letting them guide you along. Eventually you get control back and you stare down at the bloody corpse where your friend you used to be and lick your lips.

You tasted really good.

* * *

You haven't seen Noodle in a while. Not that you've exactly been looking, spending most of your time holed up in your room avoiding everyone, but you do wonder what she's up to.

So, you look for her. She's not in the house, it doesn't look like (although you didn't check Murdoc's room for obvious reasons), so you leave the house. Maybe she went somewhere.

You notice her down the road a ways, appearing to be walking somewhere. You watch her for a while, then decide to follow her, keeping a safe distance. Maybe she's going somewhere cool.

But while you're dead, you're no ghost, and your attempts to get a little closer and see what's going on fail as soon as you trip over an untied shoelace and go down with an audible thump and she turns to look at you. So much for that.

* * *

2D wasn't sure why he'd suddenly had the idea to prank himself. It just came to him. But the best thing about pranking yourself is that you know exactly what's going to get you and what you'll see coming, so he knew he could do it. He just had to find the perfect prank.

Eventually, he noticed the other him had fallen asleep on a couch. Sensing an opportunity, he walked up to the other him as quietly as he could. He stood there for a while, very still, not breathing, waiting for him to wake up.

When he did, he'd get a surprise.

* * *

"Hey Noodle, want to go get ice cream?" you ask, coming up behind her with a grin. She looks at you, confused. Before she asks you anything you hold your hand up. "Nothing special, really," you explain, "just felt like celebrating something. Anything. I'll even eat some too."

She still looks at you skeptically, but smiles and goes along with it anyway. She doesn't need to know that you really made a mess in the kitchen trying to do something different with your food and don't feel like cleaning it up.

It's just a celebration. Nothing more.


	14. Pictures of You (Part Two)

Here's another collection of tiny prompt thing stories. I have some "regular" stuff I'm working on too so don't worry about that. These are not necessarily "canon" to the blog's storyline. Magic anons (anonymous people who can affect your characters in some way if you so desire) come into play in some of them; 2D was turned into a vampire for two days (might be a story or two about that later). Prompts come from dualdent and the-japanesegorillaz.

* * *

Your memory might be going and while you're not sure if it's going to keep deteriorating or not there's a handful of memories you know you're not going to let go of no matter how long you last.

Even if you somehow make it to the end of the world, you'll never forget how Noodle helped you out when you weren't feeling well, how she made you laugh when you were feeling down, how patient she was, how she tolerated everything you did that Murdoc and Russel wouldn't.

Even when your head's filled entirely with worms and nothing else you'll always remember your friends.

* * *

"Wait, no, I'm not going to eat you!" you try to say, but it only comes out as a groan. It's hard to explain that you're not going to eat someone when you can't talk. Usually you're good with being able to talk but today's apparently different.

So now you're chasing after yourself, except you can't even go fast at all so you're not sure why the other you's running. He can easily get away from you at your top speed. You stop after trying to chase him for a while and watch him disappear behind a crowd of people.

You don't think you made a good impression.

* * *

"Shit, thanks, I'm starving." You look up at your rescuer with a grin. You had no idea there were zombie hunters, let alone ones that planned to capture zombies for a profit. And while you denied being a zombie again and again that guy was planning to keep you locked up until you snapped and he could prove you were dead (although why he didn't just have something to take your pulse you didn't know).

Luckily, that other you was on the ball and managed to find you right away. Apparently the guy who locked you up isn't very good with hiding his keys and your double manages to free you right away. You get out of there as fast as you can.

Later, you call the authorities from a pay phone and leave an anonymous tip that some guy's been kidnapping people. He's never heard from again.

* * *

It's dark and you try to bring the woman in quietly, but she won't stop giggling. You didn't even think your joke was that funny, but apparently it was hilarious, considering she's been giggling for five whole minutes. You try to get her to quiet down as you take her up to your room.

You feel like somebody's watching you, but you ignore it. Who'd be watching you?

It takes forever to finally get a good bite in, since she's apparently extremely interested in kissing you. Finally you manage to bite her neck, though. When the woman is finally drained of blood you toss her on the ground and get to work. When you go back to being a zombie you're going to have so much to eat.

You're not alone, though. You finally notice somebody staring at you from your doorway. So somebody was watching you. Has she been there that long? "Oh, hey Noodle," you say casually, shoving body parts into the fridge. "C'mon, don't look at me like that, you suggested it," you say. Then you turn around. "Have you been there the whole time? Isn't that a little creepy?"

She stares at you for a moment longer and then finally she grins and leaves. She sure does like messing with you.

* * *

2D bursts into the house laughing up a storm, covered in blood. He slams the door and teeters on the spot for a while before he regains his balance. "Hey Noodle!" he says, swaying into the living room and seeing her there. "How you doing?"

She stares at him like he's gone insane, and well, he practically has. The zombie-turned-vampire is barely coherent.

"I think," 2D says, holding a hand up dramatically, "I shouldn't've drank that guy's blood." He nods. "The one outside the pub," he clarifies. "'Pissin' the night away,' y'know?" He rolls off the couch and lands facedown on the floor. "This is fine," he says. "Hi, floor."

Noodle sighs and covers him with a blanket. He'll probably stay there for a while.

* * *

It was inevitable that the band would eventually break up. You're honestly surprised you all lasted as long as you did. When you went your separate ways for the last time, you eventually lost contact with each other. You missed your bandmates a lot, but you moved on.

Many years later, on a trip to Japan touring with your solo project, you notice someone on a crowded street who looks strangely familiar. Is it really who you think it is? You take a chance and walk up to her. "Hey, Noodle." Now that you're close enough, you can tell it's her. It's so weird seeing her as a little old lady. "Remember me?"

She looks at you strangely for a moment, then a grin forms on her wrinkly face. It helps that you don't look too much different from how you used to be, except for the bullet hole in your arm and the various spots of decay that crept up on you every so often. "Hello, Toochi," she says, and gives you a hug.


	15. The Blood That Moves The Body

Hi everyone, thanks for reading! This is one where 2D's a vampire. Like I said in the last one, in tumblr RP there's a phenomenon called "magic anons" where people anonymously modify your character in some way (although it's completely optional of course) and 2D got turned into a vampire for a couple of days. So that's the story behind this one.

* * *

You're not sure you understand this magic stuff, but you don't necessarily have to understand this. You've been turned into a vampire, and based on the terms you have a whole two days to be one.

Two entire days.

Being a zombie? You had that shit down. But being a vampire is beyond your grasp.

The first thing you do with your newfound vampirism is try to turn into a bat, which basically involves you jumping off a couch and hitting your head on the floor. It hurts. You can just feel your goth cred dropping as you pick yourself up off the floor. So much for that idea.

After that incident you don't exactly feel like doing much, but you make sure to cover up all the windows. You could be lucky and be the kind of vampire that doesn't fry in the sun, but you don't want to find out the hard way. Once that's taken care of, you go out to do something about that intense thirst you've developed.

The vampire instincts don't come to you as easily as the zombie ones did, and you wonder if that has something to do with not turning vampire the traditional way. At any rate, your feeding is messy and violent, almost like how you eat as a zombie except that's not how you're supposed to eat as a vampire. You end up with more blood on you than in you. At Noodle's suggestion you save the bodies in the fridge for when you turn back. It's weird looking at a brain and not wanting to eat it.

When it starts getting to be the time it gets light out, you hang upside-down from the shower curtain rod in the bathroom and go to sleep.

You haven't slept in half a year and it's the best sleep you've ever had. You think. You're not sure; after not sleeping for so long you're not even sure if you remember how sleeping used to be. At any rate, it's a good sleep, and you wake up at night refreshed and ready to face more vampire things.

Like being thirsty. It's a different feeling than hunger, but similar at the same time.

Any attempts to find cool vampire powers in the rest of the time you have as a vampire end up failing. All you do is try to get better at sucking blood, and your attempts at that generally fail. You do eventually discover that certain things you liked to do when you were alive are actually possible for whatever kind of vampire you are and you enjoy them immensely.

However, you could do without the being able to feel pain thing.

It's a long two days and when it's done and you're changed back to your zombie self you're happy to be back to what passes as normal. You were a terrible vampire.


	16. Try This For Sighs

Okay, another plotstyle one here. Thank you all for reading! I know I always say that but I mean it. I am glad you are reading my words, or at least looking at them. It fills my heart with happiness. Or something. Anyway, here ya go!

* * *

2D's plans weren't actually going so well this time, although things certainly were better than when he'd tried not to eat anything. Eating dead bodies worked for a while, except they tasted terrible. He ordered enough for a week, ate them, then ordered more. It was easy, or so he'd thought. He could handle things tasting bad as long as it meant he didn't have to kill anyone.

Eventually though they proved to be useless. Apparently they tasted terrible because he wasn't supposed to be eating them. Every so often he'd stay horribly hungry and have to eat more than the amount he'd ordered, which meant he had to keep ordering more and more bodies, and he really didn't want to have to deal with the creepy guys more than he had to.

Eating the dead bodies was starting to have strange effects on him too. In addition to the hunger not even decreasing a little, sometimes no matter how much he ate he could only talk in groans. After being able to talk again, going back to groaning most of the time was frustrating. Still, he tried to beat it. He had to beat it.

But what he really needed was another plan.

The blog started as a distraction from the hunger, a little thing to do to keep his mind off wanting to eat everyone, but it turned out to be more of a help to him than anything. One of his new friends that he met on the website finally convinced him to stop "starving" himself. He was a zombie, so why didn't he eat like a zombie? He would only be doing what he was supposed to be doing. The more 2D thought about it, the better it sounded. So he made a decision.

He was going to kill. On purpose. Just like he'd been so sure he wouldn't.

It was a scary thought, but so was the thought of being unable to control himself.

At least this way he could do it on his own terms.

He couldn't talk, so he was sure it was going to be hard to find someone to eat. (Something. He had to keep convincing himself it was something.) His lucky victim was a girl in a Gorillaz shirt who seemed very happy to be meeting the singer until the singer led her to a secluded area and ripped her throat out.

He felt bad about it, sure, but he had no choice.

It tasted like he vaguely remembered the first time tasting, although this time he was mostly in control. The fear in her eyes was much like the fear he'd seen in his first kill, that thing he wanted to see over and over. The screams of pain, the blood everywhere, it was perfect.

As he stood there licking the blood off of his fingers, trying to figure out the best way to get home without anyone noticing, he realized. This was what he wanted. This was what he was meant to be.

Maybe he was still 2D, but he was also a flesh-eating monster. And honestly? He was okay with that.


	17. Mirror Man

Hi, thanks for reading, the usual. Hi-fives.

* * *

You stand in front of the mirror and stare at the reflection of the walking corpse you call a body, at your collection of zombie bites and accidental knife wounds, at the worm-infested grey skin and faint bloodstains you can't get rid of and the little scattered patches of rotted flesh that remind you of times you'd rather forget, at every little discrepancy that seems painfully obvious to you but nobody seems to notice.

You look good, for a dead guy.

Your bites are clean, even though they're crawling with worms, and they almost look fake. Almost. You need a fresh bandage for your bigger bite, but you need to buy new ones so you'll be wearing long sleeves today. A worm starts wiggling out of the bite on your shoulder and you push it back in gently. It's bizarre how you can hide being a zombie so well, considering you're pretty sure you don't, but apparently you do it and think it's best not to question it.

You can't feel anything at all and it's strange to watch the body in the mirror move in time with your own, strange to see your body move at all. You touch your hand to the mirror and feel nothing. You touch your hand to your face and feel nothing. It's always nothing.

It was a little scary at first, just like everything else about being a zombie, but you're mostly used to it now and you welcome the lack of feeling, as without it you'd probably be in a lot of pain. It doesn't stop it from being strange, though.

Staring at the mirror, you open your mouth and groan at your reflection, making the scariest zombie face you can manage. You don't think it's particularly scary, really, but apparently your victims do. Then again, they're the ones getting their flesh torn off; you're just making faces in a mirror. Being killed's got to be at least a little scary, you can't quite remember but you're pretty sure it was.

You think your missing front teeth make you look a little goofy, though, and you spend a good ten minutes making faces.

As you continue to stare at your reflection you wonder exactly what you came in for. There had to have been a reason, but you got distracted. You certainly hadn't come in to stare at yourself, that was for certain. But you'd already washed up and did everything you'd need to do in the bathroom, so maybe you did.

You shrug and walk out, pulling your shirt on as you leave, the sleeves covering your bites. You'll figure it out eventually.


	18. Going Solo

Hello friends, thank you for reading as always. Love ya.

* * *

Your numb, slightly stiff fingers press down on keys, twist knobs, add and subtract and replace and adjust wires until the noise coming out of the instrument matches the noise you hear in your mind. Each minor adjustment brings you that much closer to that perfect sound, but once you match that one there will always be another one close behind. Such is the nature of the synthesizer.

You point the microphone towards you with purpose, and as you finally decide on the perfect synthetic sound for the moment you start to sing. You're not recording anything yet, just working on writing things really, but you still want it to be as close to perfect as you can get it. It's important.

You can still sing normally, yes, as long as you're well-fed, but that's not what you're going for here. No, this time you groan out the words into the microphone, words that would sound like mindless noise to others but to you they're full of purpose, full of emotion that you can't even express in English. These words are zombie words, words that sound like nothing but mean everything.

The lyrics, meaningful only to you and any other zombies that might be listening, speak of your gruesome transformation in both mind and body. You wrote them the other day, scrawled in harsh black marker against a crumpled and bloodstained paper background, an incomprehensible transcription of letters supposedly representing the noises coming out of your mouth. You filled the margins with tiny doodles of brains and hearts and other organs, enough so that the words on the paper get lost sometimes, but you know what you wrote.

The paper is only a formality, some semblance of normal. You don't even know if you're spelling anything right; zombie isn't usually a written language.

It doesn't matter.

It's a very personal project and you're not even sure if you'll finish it, not even sure if you _want _to finish it. Everything has so much meaning to you, just you, and you want it to be absolutely perfect.

You have a feeling you'll never release it, but it's not a big deal. It exists for you, by you. A solo project meant for one person alone, and while your zombieism is still a secret you'll never be able to show it to more than your bandmates anyway.

You adjust the synthesizer again and move on to something else. You're proud of the words on this one, questioning your existence and the instincts that ask you to be something you can't be, even as they change you.

You don't have anything written down for this one, not yet. Everything about it has been improvised so far and while your slightly rotting brain forgets things sometimes, this one won't be forgotten so easily.

You groan harshly into the microphone, your voice almost unrecognizable to anyone but you.

"I am the apocalypse. I am the end."


	19. When The World Ends

Dumb super short one today. Hello friends. Thanks for reading. Thanks for even looking even if you don't read! Thanks for existing. I like you guys. I actually haven't posted most of these on the blog. I should link it there. Probably.

* * *

They say the world's ending soon. They have all sorts of ways they think it's going to happen, but nothing definite. You don't think it's really going to happen. Not yet. You haven't planned it yet.

See, you don't particularly try to, but you often find yourself imagining the apocalypse, caused, in the beginning, by you.

Would it be so bad to occasionally maybe let a person go after you bit them? To see them spread the same infection you'd spread, to see the world wither and die in front of your eyes? You exist to eat, yes, and you've been doing a good job of that, but you also exist to infect, and you'd be doing your job so much better if you'd just let them go.

And you want to. Oh, how you _want_ to.

It's up there on the list of things you want to do right under eat brains. Except one of those things you do already and one of those things you've been refusing to do.

You know that if you do choose to infect instead, eventually your food supply will run out, your body will rot, and you'll become one of them. You don't want that, but you can't help but imagine it. You wouldn't have to worry about much anymore as one of them, would you? No, no you wouldn't.

That little voice in the back of your head that you've been fighting so long thinks it's a great idea.

Instincts. Not a lot of fun.

You have a lot of practice in ignoring your instincts, though, so they're nothing more than an annoyance to you. A really convincing annoyance, but not convincing enough.

You kill people on a daily basis. You murder them, destroy them, happily feeding on their flesh and fear, listening to their screams of pain and terror. You're a monster.

But when the world ends, _if_ the world ends, it won't be your fault.


	20. Closer To Real

Hi! Thanks for reading. This one's another magic anon flavored one. Somebody gave 2D bad hallucinations so that is what's happening here.

* * *

_I'm just making sense from dividing signs_  
_one reality's getting hard to find_  
_strike my fingers and the answers come_  
_can't tell if they're real, they alter_  
-Iris, "Closer To Real"

The computer is the closest thing I have to normal right now. The edges of the screen swim away from me when I look at them but other than that it doesn't seem to be doing anything different. If I could I'd stay there all day until things return to normal, but I can't.

I can't stop looking at things.

I try to force myself not to, but I get up from my computer chair and slowly walk towards the window.

With two fingers I carefully pull apart the wriggling blinds only to pull my hand away as fast as possible like I've been burnt. The whales are still out there. I should have known. I thought I was safe up here, but nothing's safe. There is no safe. Safe is a myth.

Who taught whales to fly anyway?

I dump the ever-changing collection of stuff from my bed and curl up, squeezing my eyes shut. I want this trip to end but I don't think I'll ever come down. It's times like these (as if there's ever times like these) that I wish I could sleep, so I could just quit existence for a while and wait it out but I can't.

I know none of this is real. I know, I know I know I know but I can't shake the feeling that it _is_, that something out there is tangible and real, and it's most likely the whales. Of course it is.

I'm so fucking out of it that I'm back in it. I don't know what it is.

Suddenly I'm hungrier than I've ever been. I stand up, go for the longest walk I've ever taken, and open the black hole of my fridge, pushing the snakes away to get at the good meat. It looks like it's gone bad but I eat it anyway, and it's normal.

I miss normal.

A doorway opens up in the wall and I stare at it. It stares back, tempting me with whatever's inside and despite trying not to I find myself going towards it, ready to go through and see what's waiting for me.

Predictably, I slam into the wall and the doorway disappears, and I can only feel disappointed about not being able to see what's inside. Maybe it was answers, secrets, a room full of the most delicious body parts, but I'll never know.

The walls start melting and the floor falls apart and suddenly I'm floating, not above the room below me but above so many skeletons, their skulls staring up at me. My victims. I try to apologise but I'm not sorry, can't be sorry. This is who I am now, surely they'll understand.

I'm no longer freaked out. I am Freaked Out, have become the embodiment of Freaked Out. It's not a state, it's a Thing, and it is me.

It's all real, none of it's real, and I can see _everything_.


	21. Symptom Finger

Hi! Again, thanks for reading, I'm professing my love to you right here and now if you are reading (no I'm not). And remember, if you feel like it you can always go bother 2D at z0mb12d3 on tumblr. Or not. No skin off my butt either way. ANYWAY.

* * *

Some days when you have nothing better to do you stare at your arms and just think back to that day. The day you died, changed, became inhuman. The day you reanimated and the hunger became the major part of your existence.

Y'know, _that _day.

What is it, really, you wonder, flexing your fingers. You know of so many different kinds of zombies. They change from one film to the next, each with their own rules. Makes it a little hard to prepare for the real thing.

You know it's some kind of an infection, although how you know that much you're not quite sure. Instincts probably. They seem to be the answer for everything you know about zombies that doesn't come from films. Instincts tell you what to do, what to eat, how to do it, and while you don't always listen to them they seem to have some idea of what you're supposed to do.

The infection, if that's what it is, spreads via a bite, any bite, anywhere, teeth sinking into delicious soft flesh, bleeding its reach into the wound as it bleeds out. As the body dies, it takes hold, reviving it somehow, dead flesh animating. You know this much.

You could certainly feel it when you were bitten, something there underneath all the pain, something_ unreal _traveling through your body, changing everything it touched while you bled to death. You were too busy focusing on the pain to give it much notice, but it was there.

You wonder what it might have been like if you hadn't fainted. Would you have felt the change? Would you have felt the hunger creep up on you? Would you have noticed when you died and became the monster you are now?

Too late for that, anyway.

The most you know about the infection other than the fact that the instincts wish you would infect more people is that you infected someone once, only once. You had two girls, both bitten several times before they would stop trying to fight you. While you worked on removing one's brain, the other got up. You had to smash its head in with a lamp. The body was ruined.

You tend to eat one at a time now. Infection makes things taste terrible.

Maybe someday you'll learn all the secrets of being a zombie. But for now, you're fine really.

You just have to keep ignoring that little voice that tells you to bite everyone.

Easy.


	22. Go Go Yellow Screen

This one's sort of a stupid little one about video games. I have a few more interesting ones on the way but you gotta wait. Here's a thing. Hi. Thanks for reading. You're cool. Yes, you.

* * *

When you're awake all the time, it's pretty easy to get bored. You might have all sorts of things you've got planned to do, but you don't really want to do them. I'm not sure why. Maybe there's some sort of scientific explanation for it but I don't know all that much about scientific explanations so I don't know it. Or maybe there isn't an explanation at all. I'm not sure.

Anyway I've been working on a few things lately (a solo project and a book mainly), but then I get hungry and forget what I was doing. Or I'll be eating and forget what I was doing. Or I'll just forget what I was doing. It usually ends up with me forgetting what I was doing actually. Eventually I'll get something done though. But until then? Distractions.

One thing I've been trying is video games.

A friend of mine's been trying to teach me all sorts of things like special moves in fighting games. You know the ones where you have to press about sixteen buttons in a certain way? Yeah. Those. I'm already okay at games but she says I can do better, always in that weird numbery way she likes to say things. I can't understand her half the time, honestly.

I don't really know why she bothers.

See, games are hard. My reaction times are shit now. I can still kick Murdoc's arse, I'm pretty sure anyone can, but I'm no match against Noodle or Russel. Not that I used to be amazing or anything, but I used to be better. I used to be able to win a few games every so often. I didn't used to be so slow.

So I've been looking around for games that I might be good at.

Which is sort of hard.

I like Minecraft, Minecraft's nice. When you play Minecraft you can just go around and build things and explore and everything. Except when you run into those guys who explode. You can build a big house and you can go look around for stuff and you can get potatoes from zombies.

I don't carry potatoes around but what do I know? Maybe I should start.

But yeah. Games. I try. That's... about it really.


	23. Changes

Hi. This one should be a little more interesting. Thanks for reading.

* * *

It's strange, having everything that makes you you taken away, changed while you're not looking, and handed back to you all balled up and destroyed and transformed and something different, something else, bits of you somehow still there under everything.

And when it's all said and done you've got no idea which parts of you are the same and which parts have been changed, which bits are your original self and which are the ones that replaced you. You start to wonder, have I always been like this? Is this new? Where'd that come from? You forget you didn't used to have these feelings. You forget you used to be human, used to sleep, used to breathe, used to eat regular food. You forget how you used to be. You forget, you forget, you forget, but you still remember too.

And it turns out that all you can do is take yourself back, say thanks, and just hope for the best.

I look in the mirror and I still look like me, but there's something just under there that's the zombie. He's got blue hair, black eyes, no front teeth, he sounds like me, but he's different. I don't know how different, though. He's sort of greyish, he's numb, he's usually covered in blood, he's missing a heart, and he's infested with worms, but at the same time I can tell it's me. Maybe the zombie was always under there, waiting for the human me to change. Waiting for the opportunity. Maybe this was all something that was just supposed to happen. Maybe if I'd have gone a different way the day I died there would have just been another zombie waiting.

Maybe I've always been a zombie and all it took was a few bites to find out. I sure talked about zombies enough for it.

Maybe I'm still me, maybe I'm someone else. I don't know anymore. I don't care anymore. I don't feel anymore.

I remember trying to fight it, at first, being so sure that whatever happened I could just fight it and win. After all, how hard could it be?

I couldn't win, not really. Nobody can win.

There's no point in fighting it.

Once you accept that you're a monster things start to get easier. Once it becomes who you are and you stop trying to pretend you're who you used to be everything just... works. When you realise there's nothing you can do and this is what you are now, everything just seems to start making sense.

"Turn and face the strange."


	24. It's Called A Heart

Here's something about something that happened. I think the story does okay at explaining it. Thanks for reading friends. Hi-fives forever.

* * *

As you go into the bathroom to get cleaned up you notice the faint seam on your chest you'd honestly like to forget. Unfortunately, despite how well you've been put back together, you still see it and it's there and it reminds you.

Against your will, almost mesmerized, you trace a bloody finger down the scar. It might be barely noticable to others, the exact sort of thing a zombie might have anyway, but you know better. That's not supposed to be there. That wasn't there to begin with. You remember exactly what's under there, or more accurately what isn't under there.

Your heart.

You'd given her your fucking _heart_. You'd let her just fish around in your chest and pull the thing out. Literally. And you were happy to. You remember that ridiculous smile you had on your face as she cut the damn thing out of you. How worried you were when she told you it had worms in it. How ecstatic you were when she still seemed to like it.

You would have done anything for her.

Her, her, _her_. HER. The cyborg.

You don't quite remember the reason why the cyborg was reactivated, but she was, and somehow you're paying for it. You're her plaything, apparently. Wormfood. Coffin fodder. She's got all sorts of rude nicknames for you. And a particularly unfortunate incident involving one of those greyfaced _things_made you fall in love with her temporarily.

So now the useless organ that once helped keep you alive is in a jar somewhere, in the basement probably, far away from your body where it should be. Maybe she does experiments on it, maybe she just looks at it and laughs. Maybe both.

Either way, it's fucking bizarre.

And oh, you were so sure it was so bloody _romantic_, that it was the most romantic thing you could do. You were convinced you loved her. And you did, that was the worst part. It fucked with your mind and you did.

Understandably, when everything went back to normal, you freaked out. You remembered everything.

You still remember. You wash the blood off of your face and try to forget but you still_ remember_.

And the worst thing is you'd like to hate her for it, you have every reason to hate her for it, but you can't.

She stole your heart and the most you can do is try to force yourself to be in a good mood, make jokes about it, laugh it off, ignore it, whatever. There's not much else you can do. It's happened, it's done, there's nothing left to do. It's just yet another reminder of your inhumanity.


	25. I Spit Roses

Hello! I don't have all that much interesting to say about this one. Thanks for reading.

* * *

The ideas spill from your pen onto the paper one after the other although none of it necessarily makes sense. Once decided, the plan was easy enough: a concept album. Beginning with your demise and rebirth, ending with your acceptance and embrace of your situation, perhaps even continuing beyond, documenting your entire descent into becoming a monster.

Oh, but you'll be _acting_. Your secret will still be safe. You'll pretend to be a human who's pretending to be a zombie. There's so many layers you'd be giving yourself a headache if you still got them.

Your concepts so far are many, bits of English interspersed with the groaning zombie vocals over varying synthlines. It's punk, it's synthpop, it's goth, it's new wave, it's all over the place and yet a cohesive whole.

Or it will be, once it's finished.

The name is still a mystery. You have ideas, but none seem good enough. You know someday you'll stumble across the perfect name, but for now you simply call it The Project. It serves its purpose.

Hey, take a second, fast forward:

A tour: clubs, pubs, small, dirty, intimate, the lights flickering on and off erratically above your head, barely enough outlets available for your equipment. No arenas, no stadiums. Today you are not Fame. You are 2D, you are Stu, you are you, dressed up in blood and guts and the pretense of being yourself-not-yourself. You look out from your tiny stage-perch on hundreds of bodies pressed together and you're barely hanging on but you make it, you make it.

You groan hungrily at the crowd and they show no signs of fear. This is a show, yes, this is acting, but it's a different kind of acting from what everyone thinks. You press a few keys and groan again at the writhing mass of flesh that stands before you. What you wouldn't do to jump in and eat as much as you can. But you don't. You push the thought from your mind. You have control. You've made it this far, and you have _control_. You glare at the crowd, apparent king of the zombies snarling like Idol, but then you raise a hand in a friendly wave and your face splits into a wide grin. Your fans cheer and you open your hungry mouth to give them what they want.

Here:

_synthetic sound realistic corpse_  
_a zombie carries no remorse_  
_just fingers keys dead and numb_  
_a synthesizer deaf and dumb_

Words directly from your heart, your metaphorical heart perhaps, the real thing long gone. Some of the only words your audience can understand. You spit them like roses, long dead thorny things that crumble upon contact. The words are harsh, cold, raw, real, but you're the only one who realizes the true meaning.

And the crowd goes wild.

Wait, stop, rewind: it's not the future. It will be the future someday, but you still need to get there first. Be patient. For now you sit in your room and write and think and play and adjust and decide and procrastinate but one day you'll tell the world.


	26. Pictures of You (Part Three)

Hi everyone, thanks for reading! Time for another dump of these short ones that came from the prompts and everything! I like when it's time to write these things. Some of them involved shuffling music, those have the song title and an inspiring chunk of lyrics. These are not necessarily canon to the blog's storyline. Prompts and whatnot came from dualdent, noodletron, the-japanesegorillaz, onicatmystery, and sexysuperbassist.

* * *

Iris - Unknown

_I feel unknown _  
_The ever still decay _  
_But I can't stop _  
_I carry on this way_

"So, uh, which one of us is the real one anyway?" The subject had come up by way of a joke, but it had been a thing the zombie'd been thinking of sort of a lot lately. Not on purpose, but he'd been thinking about it. Someone had to be the real one, right? Wasn't that how stuff worked? So, eventually, it came up. He leaned back on the wall behind him and crossed his arms. "I'm thinking it's you, probably. You're still alive so it's probably you."

His human self looked over at him with his head tilted and an eyebrow raised. "I don't think it really matters does it?" he said, one leg up and resting on the wall. "We're both pretty real."

Contemplating this for a few seconds, the zombie groaned slightly and nodded. "Yeah, guess so," he said. That made a lot of sense. Stuff seemed pretty real to him. "Well, just in case, I don't mind not being the real one though, really," he said.

* * *

Mesh - Friends Like These

_And everyday I feel it clearly_  
_It's easy just to save the worst until last_  
_And maybe I could see it really_  
_It's painful what we do_

2D flattened himself up against the wall as Cyborg pushed past him. The conversation had been pleasant enough, if you could call talking about exactly how someone would take out your insides pleasant, but she still freaked him out. Still, friendly conversation was nice, right?

Friendly. Right.

But even though she was really shitty to him all the time, that was just programming right? And Murdoc was shitty to him all the time too and he still considered him a friend. Yeah, maybe she was really into cutting him open and taking his stuff. She was still his friend. For some reason.

He was having a hard time justifying it, but there it was.

He nodded and turned around to see her standing there. He may have screamed a little. Just a little though. "Uh, hi," he said. She rolled her eyes and pushed past him again. Apparently she was very busy.

* * *

Assemblage 23 - Otherness

_To trust completely_  
_With an open heart_  
_To risk the wounds_  
_Of having it all fall apart_  
_Seems paralyzing_  
_With implicit risk_  
_But the packaging_  
_Is not what makes the gift_

2D couldn't understand why Noodle always seemed to trust him so much. Sure, he was sort of the same person he always was, but the "sort of" was a pretty big sort of. He was a monster after all. Noodle was human and there was the very distinct possibility he could snap at any time.

And yet she was always fine playing games with him or watching a film or just hanging out. They could talk to each other like old friends and there was never any of that "hey you're probably going to kill me" tension he'd expected. It was almost like nothing changed.

He didn't understand it, but he appreciated it. He appreciated it a lot.

* * *

2D peeked around the corner to see what Noodle was staring at. "_Fuck_." Apparently the sewer system had decided to be full of zombies. Well, whatever the reason, it wasn't his fault. 2D looked back at her and then at the oncoming horde. He knew she could probably handle them, but she wasn't really in the best condition for that. "This… isn't good," he said, staring. He had to do something about it. He stood in front of her and groaned a warning at the approaching dead, who just kept on approaching. Persistent.

He found himself becoming somewhat angry. This was _his_ turf. He had no connection with the other zombies, not really, and he just had this overwhelming sense of everything being _his_. He balled his hands into fists and glared, groaning louder this time. "_Back off. Mine._" The zombies drew closer and then stopped, inches away from him. "_Leave!_" he groaned, and they finally turned away.

Eyes wide, 2D turned around. "I can't believe I just did that."

* * *

"Trust me, this'll be great," the zombie said, grinning widely at his human self. The other had mentioned something about getting back at Murdoc somehow, and that's when the zombie had the idea. Pulling a length of human intestine from his fridge, he draped it around his shoulders and motioned for the other him to follow.

Slowly they crept down the steps towards Murdoc's room. "He's not in there," the zombie reported, listening at the door. "Let's go." He opened the door slowly. Although it was kind of a creepy room, the zombie could at least see. "This way," he said, pulling his double towards Murdoc's bed. The intestines now safely tucked in bed, the two made their way safely back out of the room, laughing and giving each other high fives.

"If he asks, it was just me, alright?" the zombie said. No reason to get the one who'd get hurt in trouble.

* * *

2D sat down in front of Murdoc, wondering what exactly to do with him. He hadn't exactly planned this far. He hadn't expected Murdoc to go along with it, and now there he was. Murdoc glared at him, blood flowing from the bite mark in his neck. He was trying hard not to show signs of pain, but 2D _knew_.

Usually at this point he'd be cracking open his victim's skull and eating his brain. The instincts were certainly yelling at him to get on with it. But he wasn't going to end this one quickly. Murdoc had done so much shit to him over the years that really, why would he? 2D grinned and crawled closer to the bassist. Murdoc could use some of the pain of becoming a zombie.

Groaning, 2D bit into Murdoc's arm, ripping the flesh away quickly. Murdoc tried not to scream, instead emitting a sort of pained grunt. 2D did the same to the other arm. Each bite was minor compared to what he usually did, and he could see Murdoc's face contorting with pain as the infection started to spread.

Payback was _amazing_.


	27. Creatures

Hi! Been a while hasn't it? Sorry, I've actually been busy like... roleplaying... and not writing story things... oops. I have been planning to write things though! Anyway 2D celebrated his first deathday earlier this month which is kinda a big deal I guess. Lotta stuff's been happening. This is a story about a man and his rat.

* * *

2D stepped into his room, hands cupped, pushing the door closed with his shoulder. Stepping over piles of shredded clothes and bones and everything else he rarely cleaned up he made his way to a large glass tank sitting on the other side.

A piece of paper taped to the tank bore the words "Rat Scabies" scrawled in marker next to a bloody fingerprint. Everything in his room had bloody fingerprints, unless it was just completely soaked in blood. 2D had given up on anything ever being not covered in blood.

He didn't mind, really. Not anymore. He was a zombie and zombies didn't care.

He stared into the tank, tilting his head slightly. "Hello," he groaned. The rat stared back at him. At least he thought it was staring back, but maybe it was just staring. It did that. He did that. The rat was a rat, yes, but it was also a zombie, and 2D saw a lot of himself in the little guy.

Maybe that was why he kept it.

He hadn't gone into the experiment expecting to end up with a pet, but there it was. It had been Cyborg's idea, studying zombies by using rats. Apparently they were close to humans, and there were some experiments they could do on rats that they couldn't do on him (at least not without screwing him up big time). Some rats had been injected with his saliva, some with his blood, and this one in particular had been bitten by another zombie rat.

The other rats had been destroyed, but 2D found himself becoming attached to the little guy. So now he had a pet rat. Rat Scabies, named after the original drummer for The Damned. He thought it was clever.

And even though he knew the rat couldn't speak his brand of zombie, he talked to it. He told it things he couldn't tell his blog, couldn't tell his friends. It was stupid maybe, since he was pretty much talking to himself, but it made him feel better sometimes. At least he had some kind of zombie to talk to.

2D smiled, holding his hands up to the glass. "I brought you some food," he groaned, uncupping his hands to reveal a very much alive and squirming rat. Suddenly Rat Scabies seemed to spring to life. It pushed up against the glass of the tank, tiny teeth gnashing, trying to get at the meal.

2D looked down at the rat in his hands and pulled gently on one of its front legs until the leg came off entirely. He then lowered it into the tank, where Rat Scabies made quick work of it. 2D grinned and dropped the rest of the animal into the tank, then wiped the blood off onto his jeans and sat down to watch the rat eat.

They were both monsters, anyway. They had to stick together.


	28. Stigmata Martyr

Hey friends! Man, did stuff happen! I've had some other stuff half written but I really had to write this one. It was imperative. Thanks for reading, reviewing, taking a look, et cetera et cetera. Hi-fives all around.

* * *

You return to your blood-covered room, the routine the same as usual. However, there is one difference. You don't bring home a "date". Instead you carry a single shopping bag. Dropping a fresh rat into Rat Scabies's tank, you dump the contents of your shopping bag onto the bed as he moves to devour his meal.

You'll eat later. You're a little busy now. Now on your bed sits several pairs of new socks and gloves. Among them is a pair of skeleton gloves, which you were very adamant about purchasing. Skeleton gloves are _cool_. Murdoc said they weren't, which was all the better reason to get them.

You pull the brown work gloves you're currently wearing off and toss them into a pile of clothes in the corner. Your room is your safe place where you don't have to hide things, where you don't have to pretend to be alive. No one's around to see the holes in your hands. The ones on your feet aren't such a big deal, but hands... well, they're _hands_.

You pick up one of the new gloves, flick open a knife pulled from your pocket, and start to cut one of the fingers off. It's uncooperative though, and sloppy, and you realize this probably isn't the best way to get fingers off a glove. So you find yourself a pair of scissors instead and continue with the rest of the fingers.

This works just fine and before you know it you have a nice new pair of fingerless skeleton gloves. Very fitting for a zombie. Before you slip the new gloves on you stare at your new wounds. You usually try not to pay attention to the various bites and scars and other damages but every so often you can't help but look. Especially when things are still so fresh on both body and mind.

The day: Easter. A holiday many people celebrate these days by painting eggs and eating chocolate. A holiday Cyborg and Murdoc decided to celebrate by nailing you to a cross. Russel was no help. You were stuck up there until Noodle found you and helped you down.

Needless to say you were upset. And honestly, you're still upset. Usually, despite whatever happens to your dead body you stop worrying about it rather quickly. After all, you've got better things to do. Like eat. But not this time.

Once again you stare at your hands and for the briefest moment you sneer. Why do things like this always happen? Why do you let them? You're a zombie. A monster. You should be able to keep things like this from happening.

You wish you could do _something_. But you can't.

You sigh, shake your head, and pull on your new gloves. Maybe someday.


End file.
